The Web is the biggest open source success of all

The open source movement is a popular one, and it’s certainly made its mark on the software landscape. But where has it made its biggest mark? What is the most successful open source endeavor of all time?

Actually, when you see it as a whole, isn’t the Web the biggest open source success of them all?

Perhaps the most famous example is the LAMP stack that lies behind so many websites, i.e. Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. But there’s so much more when you think about it.

Here are some of the open source projects that make the Web tick.

Web browsers

While Microsoft’s closed source Internet Explorer still has a big share of the web browser market, open source alternatives are just as common these days, and they are growing. We have Mozilla’s Firefox, which is open source, and then there’s the rapid rise of Webkit-based browsers such as Safari, but most notably Chrome.